The Atlas Control Toolkit: it’s worth downloading

Microsoft's ASP.NET team has released a new control suite that leverages …

In case you didn't know, Atlas is Microsoft's free framework for building AJAX-style web applications. Last month, the company gave the go-ahead for developers to begin to use Atlas in production, and at that time there were whispers of a possible Atlas server control set on the horizon. It's about one month later and the control suite has arrived. I have one word for it: wow.

Formally known as the Atlas Control Toolkit, it is made up of the following controls: Cascading DropDown, Collapsible Panel, Confirm Button, Drag Panel, Hover Menu, Popup Control, Reorder List, Textbox Watermark, and Toggle Button. Besides being amazing controls, they are also open source. Why? Because the ASP.NET team wants to create a joint effort with developers from all around in order to create a mega-set of controls. Just ask Shawn Burke.

But the best part is yet to come. We're doing something new and different here - this set of controls is more than just a add-on pack, it's going to be the kernel of a shared source project that we're starting around it. Basically, my mission is to band together with our users (you!) and turn this toolkit into the biggest, baddest set of web client UI extensions around. We're still working out the details for how this is going to work but it shouldn't be too much longer. Whether you are building an website that you want to bring to life or you want to hack out some radial JavaScript, this project will be the place for you.

I sat down tonight and worked with the controls for a while, and they were very easy to use. For example, using the Reorder List is similar to using a DataGrid/GridView. It has an ItemTemplate, EditItemTemplate, and a few other templates that handle drag-drop functionality. Another example, the Textbox Watermark, only requires an existing textbox ID and an optional CSS class to work. Very simple and elegant. If you are a web developer that is familiar with ASP.NET, this is a handy addition to your toolbox.

The Atlas Control Toolkit can be downloaded here. It includes all the sources plus an AtlasControlExtender VSI and a sample website.